- Here’s a nice retro piece to kick off NewsBites today. Film Score Monthly is posting never-before-published pieces at their website, and has an interview piece with composer Ira Newborn , who says lots of nice stuff about Kevin and Mallrats, very timely for the 10th Anniversary of the film. Some clips:
by Daniel Schweiger
After scoring John Hughes’ teen comedies, Ira Newborn can’t escape the Curse of Comedy. Now he’s playing to the next wave of Mall Rats.
In the 1980’s, a writer and director personified the young angst of the Reagan generation. Setting his films in Chicago’s whitebread ‘burbs, John Hughes’ teenagers were obsessed with sex, money, grades and social climbing. But what really made his comedies different were their intelligence, original jokes and a compassion that came from a director who had really been in his characters’ shoes.
Aside from their Mad Magazine imagery, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science were just as memorable for their soundtracks. Not only were they chock-full of every song style from rhythm and blues to new wave and hard rock, but Hughes’ film scores had a big, brassy sound whose exuberant energy played the characters’ emotions and cut through their pop surroundings. This satirical style has now become the sound of high teen comedy for the 90’s.
“Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were the films I grew up on,” comments Clerks director Kevin Smith. His new sorta sequel Mall Rats is a wonderfully drugged-out, grossed-out descendent of the John Hughes’ school of teen humor. “John Hughes was a great writer,” Smith continues, “and his jokes took the movies so far. Then Ira Newborn’s music came in and underlined their humor, editorializing on Hughes’ gags and making his films that much funnier. What Ira can do with music is what Jim Carrey can do with his body. He just makes you laugh by doing something outrageous. So as soon as I was in production on Mall Rats, I told my producers that the film needed Ira Newborn’s music. It just made sense that Ira would be spoofing the films that he made his name on.”
If Newborn’s scores for Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science reflected the Reagan generation (the only Hughes classic that Newborn wouldn’t score would be The Breakfast Club), then Newborn’s music for Mall Rats at once gives ’90s materialism an affectionate finger. His music passes through the soundtrack like the groups of teens you’d find hanging out at the Galleria. There’s a metal guitar for the stoner dude, science fiction synthesizers or a Jedi-obsessed mute, and a lush romantic orchestra for a pair of young lovers. These are only a few of the energetic comic styles that populate Newborn’s score. It’s the music that this composer’s famous for. And damned if he can get away from it.
In spite of his desire to compose for a serious drama, there doesn’t seem to be a hit comedy that Ira Newborn hasn’t scored. Think about the driving soul of The Blues Brothers, The Naked Gun’s overblown jazz and Ace Ventura’s surfin’ guitar. Think Michael Corleone growling “They keep pulling me back in,” and you’ll get the picture. With a rep for irascibility and a sense of humor that’s pure New York Mensch, Newborn has had heated partnerships with such top slapstick directors as John Hughes, John Landis and the Zucker brothers. Unlike today’s comic new wave, whose musical tastes tend to lean towards grunge, these filmmakers loved the old, theatrical style of film scoring. It was a big sound that made their pictures real, and Newborn’s melodic talent delivered the goods with a rich symphonic feeling that could turn to rock and jazz on the drop of a punchline.
Ira Newborn grew up on Long Island. His mother was an opera singer, and his father played the piano and trombone before realizing that he “had to make a living.” It’s a sense of grim, humorous reality that’s been well-imparted to a son who’s made good with his talent for the guitar. After seeing Carlos Montoya play in 1961, Newborn switched from the flute to take guitar lessons with Lenny Frank, who taught his prodigy how to be a “working musician.”
Newborn joined dozens of bands in his youth, frequently playing with another kid named Billy Joel. After doing gigs at clubs and Bar Mitzvahs, Newborn finally made the move to Broadway, and then became the musical director for the The Manhattan Transfer. This kitschy jazz group would take Ira Newborn across the world, but nowhere more important to his career than Hollywood. After overseeing the Transfer’s television show, Newborn settled down and became a studio guitar player and arranger. It was a job that made him proficient with any number of musical styles.
The beat of 1950s rock and roll would give Newborn his first movie break on 1978’s American Hot Wax, where he arranged and re-created the legendary numbers of Alan Freed’s rock shows. Newborn switched to rhythm and blues when producer Lorne Michaels got into a fight with his original composer, and took Newborn to “save the day” at the Chicago locations of The Blues Brothers. Once again, Newborn’s arrangements were playing to a packed house, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Cab Calloway swinging to his beat.
The Blues Brothers was the beginning of Ira Newborn’s unending winning streak in comedies with such scores as Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Wise Guys and the Naked Gun series. Newborn played his requisite jazz and slam-bang symphonies brilliantly, nearly every score playing to the audience’s pop musical memory. Yet it became apparent to him that success had stereotyped him. The only time that Newborn got to stray from formula was on such hybrid comedies as Short Time, Innocent Blood and Into the Night. Newborn relished playing to the dark side of these films’ action and violence, showing a serious, melodic composer who begged to be released.
Yet, the “curse of comedy” continues for Ira Newborn — to his regret and the audience’s delight in Mall Rats. Kevin Smith’s deceptively smart comedy threatens to make him the John Hughes of the stoner generation, and Ira Newborn their pied piper. His score may not have made it onto the song-overload album, but teenagers are sure to dig its originality and pop culture references. “You can make as many dick and fart jokes as you want,” Smith remarks. “But if there’s no musical glue holding them together, then all you’ve got is a bunch of gags just lying out there. I put absolute faith and trust in Ira, because I knew his score was going to pull Mall Rats together. It’s not your ‘typical’ Ira Newborn comedy score. There’s music in it that has real emotion and heart. He’s definitely capable of so much more, and if I was in the business for a score that wasn’t so over-the-top, then you’d better believe that I’d call Ira. The man knows music inside and out.”
Daniel Schweiger: What was it about John Hughes’s youth comedies that made them so important for Kevin Smith?
Ira Newborn: It’s the fact that Kevin was young when those films came out, and they reflected that part of his life. He looked at Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Sixteen Candles and said “Hey! That’s me up there!” Films associate themselves with what stage your life is in. I relate to A Hard Day’s Night and television shows that I saw in the ’50s. But John Hughes’ movies stick for me too, because they’re really good and funny. At the same time, Kevin always knew that he wanted to make movies. So when he watched those pictures, Kevin was more than a kid saying “Gee, I feel like that character.”
DS: Kevin feels that your scores made Hughes’ films particularly memorable.
IN: I have to give part of that to John Hughes. He has very interesting, wide-ranging tastes in rock and roll. He listened to an unbelievable amount of music and envisioned a song behind every scene. John picked a lot of the stuff that was excellent, and I had the gig of filling in his films’ “cavities” when the songs weren’t playing. Because John is an extremely intelligent and funny person, he gave my music a lot of opportunities to make his jokes funnier. So I can’t say I “made” those films. When I told Kevin Smith that, he didn’t believe me. Then Kevin brought up every cue I wrote, so he must have really been listening. That made me feel a lot better. So while I’ll give a lot of the musical credit to John, I know what I did too.
DS: How was it to work with Kevin Smith, who’s your director as well as a fan?
IN: When I do a movie, I want my music to become the characters, and enhance who and what they are. Kevin Smith had seen a lot of movies that I’d done, and even told me about music that I’d written and forgotten. He knew exactly what I was trying to do when few people noticed. It was one thing for Kevin to say “I’m a fan of yours.” But the biggest compliment was when he expressed what my music was trying to accomplish in those films.
DS: What’s the musical trick to rolling with a punchline?
IN: Comedies are the most difficult films to score. A composer can either get out of a joke’s way, build up to it, or leave the joke alone if it’s excellent and doesn’t need any musical help. And sometimes when the joke is really good, a composer can play with it. That takes a lot of time and trouble, because jokes are delicate. You can put in the wrong instrumental colors, or overdo the punchline. So I have to watch the joke over and over to get its nuances. Then by adding another musical facet, I can reveal something that was hidden to the joke itself, and make it funnier. I happen to be good at finding a comedy’s emotional subtext.
DS: Is there an approach to scoring a “youth comedy?”
IN: It depends. Youth comedies are made up of two things — youths and comedy. I’ve got to see the youth as a human being first, and then as a teenager. That means someone who doesn’t have four kids, and has an interest in cars, sex, cutting school, and getting a job — the same kind of things that have interested youths throughout history. Then you’ve got to see what kind of humor’s in the movie. Is it stupid? Is it tongue in cheek? Is it subtle and sophisticated? Generally that isn’t possible in a youth film, because teenagers like broader comedies. You have to make the orchestration match the people that you’re looking at. If they’re very young and you play this big, fat string section, then it’s going to sound out of place and too adult. So you need to pick the right instruments that go with youthful characters — synthesizers, guitars, bass, drums and maybe some horns. It all has to sound somewhat in line with contemporary music. If a very serious scene gets into a youth comedy, which very rarely happens, then you might be able to use heavier forces like an orchestra. Generally speaking, contemporary instruments are not as flexible at projecting different moods as an orchestra is. There’s a small range of humor that you can score using contemporary instruments. When you play rhythm and blues, audiences associate it with black people. The acoustic guitar represents folkies. In Mall Rats, I put heavy metal over Jay and Silent Bob. That’s humorous, because people associate that kind of music with stupid characters.
DS: How did you want to play the other characters in Mall Rats?
IN: While I used heavy metal for Jay, Silent Bob also had his “Jedi” theme. Brodie and Rene are loud and gross together, so I gave them a painful, grungy theme. T.S. and Brandi were clean-cut, so I composed a more emotional music for them. I didn’t play Stan Lee as Stan Lee, because I don’t know him. He’s only this guy who wrote comics, so I had to figure out what was the most interesting thing about his character. One is that he’s much older than these other kids, and second factor is that Stan is Brodie’s hero. When they’re together, I used Brodie and Rene’s theme with this sincere, string music for Stan Lee’s speech about his life and the girl that got away.
DS: Like your John Hughes comedies, Mall Rats makes a lot of references to cult TV shows and movies.
IN: I’ve only done that when I’ve been told to. However, I’m not saying that I might not allude to other music in my scores. In Mall Rats, I played the scene between T.S. and Brandi’s father like The Godfather. I didn’t plan to do it that way. I just looked at him getting closer to T.S., then putting his hands on the kid’s head and threatening him. Then for some reason, it struck me that the father reminded me of Marlon Brando! Maybe it was the shape of his head, and how he looked like he was giving T.S. the kiss of death. So I consciously alluded to music that had been beaten to death, but played it subtly. I used a trumpet with that “velvet” tone, and tremello strings which people associate with Italian mandolins. Yet my score has nothing to do with The Godfather. It’s a musical fragment of every Sicilian waltz on earth. But its instrumental combination gave the scene its Godfather feeling.
DS: Do films audiences have a collective musical memory?
IN: Most film soundtracks, especially Mall Rats, rely on using people’s memories about other kinds of music. If I had a movie where two people were kissing, and said “I’m going to write music that no one’s ever heard before,” then how are people going to know that my score’s supposed to be romantic? That’s why I think film music is like wallpaper. You can’t write one that’s completely original, because audiences won’t know what they’re listening to. Viewers have to hear what they’re looking at. If there are lush strings, there’s romance. If there are charging rhythms, then they must be accompanying a chase. Sometimes you can play against that, as in the scene in Rosemary’s Baby where Mia Farrow’s looking at the child’s carriage. You’re getting this eerie feeling because atonal strings are playing with a celeste, which is an instrument that people associate with infants. That music lets the audience know that maybe her baby is the devil. Then there are films like Platoon, where the score has nothing to do with what’s up on the screen. You hear “Adagio for Strings” during the battle action. It’s going at about one-quarter of the scene’s speed, yet the music has this amazingly profound and chilling effect on the audience.
